186 [dle Days in Patagonia. 
those unlovely mementoes of death in their gay 
plumes? Who does not shudder, albeit not with 
fear, to see the wild cat, filled with straw, yawning 
horribly, and trying to frighten the spectator with 
its crockery glare? I shall never forget the first 
sight I had of the late Mr. Gould’s collection of 
humming-birds (now in the National Museum), 
shown to me by the naturalist himself, who 
evidently took considerable pride in the work of 
his hands. I had just left tropical nature behind 
me across the Atlantic, and the unexpected meeting 
with a transcript of it in a dusty room in Bedford 
Square gave me a distinct shock. Those pellets of 
dead feathers, which had long ceased to sparkle and 
shine, stuck with wires—not invisible—over blos- 
soming cloth and tinsel bushes, how melancholy 
they made me feel! 
Considering the bright colour and great splendour 
of some eyes, particularly in birds, it seems pro- 
bable that in these cases the organ has a twofold 
use: first and chiefly, to see; secondly, to intimi- 
date an adversary with those luminous mirrors, in 
which all the dangerous fury of a creature brought 
to bay is seen depicted. Throughout nature the 
dark eye predominates; and there is certainly a 
great depth of fierceness in the dark eye of a bird 
of prey; but its effect is less than that produced by 
the vividly-coloured eye, or even of the white eye 
of some raptorial species, as, for instance, of the 
common South American hawk, Asturina pucherani. 
Violent emotions are associated in our minds— 
